Glenn Ford is one of those old actors that I like a lot but haven’t spent enough time working my way through his work. He was on the television a lot when I was a kid in the 80s, as my mum pretty much had AMC on all the time and back then, it stood for American Movie Classics and showed nothing but actual American movie classics. Ford starred in a lot of these films.

Working my way through a lot of film-noir, as of late, I wanted to give Framed a watch. Plus, it was available on YouTube for free, as many of these old school noir pictures are.

Framed also stars Janis Carter, a woman who did not get a lot of high profile roles but was probably more deserving of them than a lot of the ladies that got to the heights of Hollywood. She was impressive as hell in this and it showed that her best work would come. Unfortunately, she only stuck around in pictures for five more years before finishing her career in some German language films.

Ford plays Mike Lambert, a mining engineer that takes a temporary truck job but finds himself in trouble as his brakes fail. He goes barreling into a small town but miraculously doesn’t hurt anyone and only slightly damages the truck. Lambert is then arrested for reckless driving but his $50 bail is paid for by the lovely barmaid, Paula Craig (Carter). The reason Paula intervened is because Lambert has the same height and build as her boyfriend Steve Price, played by Barry Sullivan. The plan is to kill Lambert and make the body look as if it was Price, faking his death so that the two can get away with the $250,000 that Steve embezzled from his bank job.

Janis Carter plays the typical wicked femme fatale with plans of her own and a sugary eye on the new man in town that has come into her life. We get the typical plot twists and deception and never really know where this thing is going until the end. Carter did a fine job in this role and she sort of takes over the picture when she’s present, which is what a femme fatale should do.

Glenn Ford and Barry Sullivan both carried their own but Carter was the highlight of the film for me.

Framed is far from a perfect film-noir but it works really well. The characters are interesting enough, the situation isn’t wholly original but it keeps you engaged and everyone does a good job of giving this picture some life. Plus, it is a short movie that speeds by quite quickly.